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News Steam UI Beta Impressions

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by CardJoe, 1 Apr 2010.

  1. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

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  2. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    may i ask have they fixed the MW2 overlay bug?

    it looks awesome, been hold off because of possible problem with MW2.
     
  3. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    Steam's weakness is actually browsing games, and the new Beta is actually worse for doing this. They really need to sort out the simple nuts and bolts of finding a decent game to buy first, and then go fix all the community stuff.
     
  4. B1GBUD

    B1GBUD ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Accidentally Funny

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    I quite like the beta now, although it took a while to adjust.

    The best feature for me is the clock when you shift-tab... I'm always staying on too long, not realising how late it is!
     
  5. Centy-face

    Centy-face Caw?

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    I like the store but fail to see how it's any better its better in some ways but worse in others. The thing bugging me the most is I have nearly 200 games on steam and there still isnt a good way to manage it and the big image grid thing is just a joke the list inst much better so detail view is all there is and its the same as the old list just with no icons.
     
  6. smc8788

    smc8788 Multimodder

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    AFAIK it was a bug with the overlay in general, not just with MW2. In any case they fixed most problems with memory leaks the overlay crashing in the first week after it was released, although it will still randomly start using 50% of my CPU at times, causing stuttering in games.
     
  7. Blademrk

    Blademrk Why so serious?

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    I really like the new UI, the categories were great for organising your game library, you could assign a game to multiple categories (for example, Borderlands for example could be assigned to FPS, RPG, Multiplayer). A couple of updates ago though the functionality of categories was stripped down to 1 category per game which just doesn't work as well. I'm hoping they'll bring it back at some point.
     
  8. azrael-

    azrael- I'm special...

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    Didn't take me much more than 2 minutes of using the new STEAM UI before finding some gripes. They've practically scrapped the mini games list and also the handy filtering of installed and available games. They should just have left that functionality as it is now and merely have added the new look.

    I was also quite annoyed at seeing the Friends list sans avatars being completely illegible in the style of "<user name> <game>", i.e. "azrael Half-Life 2". It works fine if you display avatars.

    Went back to the old UI after about 5 minutes. Otherwise I might probably have found even more niggles.

    Oh, and when I wanted to report/vent on the STEAM forums I noticed my forum account had gone AWOL. Very nice...
     
  9. Pete J

    Pete J Employed scum

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    I hope they include an option to keep it looking like it does at the moment. I hate change; for example, I've made Win 7 look like 95 and have reverted back to Office 2003 :blah: .
     
  10. ssj12

    ssj12 Minimodder

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    what i would love to say is a way to sort just uninstalled games.
     
  11. Bloody_Pete

    Bloody_Pete Technophile

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    For me the biggest change is the IM sound, its a bad noise :(
     
  12. jrr

    jrr What's a Dremel?

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    Steam has long needed a more powerful advanced search in the store (e.g. "SELECT * FROM games WHERE price < $5 AND own_it_already = FALSE AND metacritic_rating > 85 AND 3rdPartyDRM = FALSE;", but probably without the SQL syntax =]).

    After they get that, maybe they can pull some of those features into the local display of your already-owned games.
     
  13. Tsung

    Tsung What's a Dremel?

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    Last time I looked (early beta) catergories was a totally broken concept. Only being able to put games individually into categories one at a time was a total deal breaker. I have over 100 games listed on steam I will not go throu' each one popping it into a category (s). I would like to be able to create a Category (eg. FPS games) and add all the games in that category by selecting them from a big check box list.

    Another interesting feature, anyone tried leaving a group in the new BETA UI?? I couldn't find a way at all of leaving groups, it appears the link is missing from the page where it should be. In the end I went back to old steam ui to do it.

    I fear change, bigger isn't better, and it has the feel of M$ Xbox UI where it tries to sell you stuff first and then let you get to the social aspects (your games list, friends list, etc.).
     
  14. Psytek

    Psytek What's a Dremel?

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    I like the feature where the new steam Ui deletes your game files willy nilly.

    i enjoy re-downloading 50GB of data on a regular basis.
     
  15. flibblesan

    flibblesan Destroyer

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    That bug was fixed a month ago.
     
  16. pizan

    pizan that's n00b-tastic

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    The only thing they need to do with achievements is to get rid of them. It kills the game when players are just trying to get there achievements instead of playing the game.

    On topic I haven't tried the beta yet but I think they need to change what ever they use as a browser in-game and for steam in general.
     
  17. phuzz

    phuzz This is a title

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    Well, I'm glad I don't have any of the problems that everyone else seems to be having (except jrr, but then sometimes I want a SQL interface to everything as well).
    Personally, my favourite bit of the new UI is the new browser, instead of being based on the IE engine, it's now webkit based, and loads faster, and just more pleasant to use.
     
  18. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

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    May I suggest GamersGate? It's based in a browser and even has a search filter for "DRM free".
     
  19. frojoe

    frojoe What's a Dremel?

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    I was wondering when that would be mentioned. To me that's the most important change. I don't browse the steam store, and only buy games on it when I know exactly what I want. I don't use the community stuff too much either. I haven't even been able to see the store recently because I don't have flash installed in IE, so the games they are advertising don't show up. Moving away from ie can only be a good thing. They may have only done this because they had to however, because they are moving to OSX, and basing steam on ie wouldn't have worked well with that change. I can't wait until I don't have to boot into windows to play TF2 and other games, especially when my i7 based hackintosh is completed this summer. (Hope this doesn't start the whole anti Apple thing, just mentioning that it is a large part of the new steam)
     
  20. pbryanw

    pbryanw Minimodder

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    In the more recent betas, they've included an option in the view menu where you're able to switch between small and large mode. Small mode being very much like the previous steam menu. Which is good, as I'm not a fan of the large library mode, which takes up 60% of your screen, either.
     
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